How to choose the president of the United States

American democracy has a rich history - in the XVIII century the United States became an independent country, and the population began to choose their presidents.However, these old traditions have led to the fact that in today's US election system retains some atavism - for example, the Electoral Institute.

Guide

1

In the United States, the current political system, which experts call a bipartisan - the real political power in most cases, is distributed between the two parties - the Democratic and Republican.Activities of other parties are not limited, but none of them is so influential in modern American history, to one of its representatives became president.

2

Presidential elections are held in the US every 4 years.According to the law passed in the second half of the XX century, the president can be elected for no more than two terms, that is, for 8 years.Nomination of candidates for the presidential election in the United States may come from party or independent mode.If the nominat

ion of the party most often is the procedure of early voting - voters are able to vote for one of the candidates within a given party.This system makes it possible to expose the party's most popular politician who can unite the voices of all the supporters of the party.Preliminaries are held by states.Also during the procedure chosen and the future of the candidate for vice-president.

3

After preliminary election candidates to file an official application for participation in the elections.The focus of the public and the press often focuses on candidates from the two major parties, but at the same time participate in the elections and politicians from other parties.For example, in the 2012 elections participated 6 candidates.Voting is conducted in a single day in all states.

4

Officially, US citizens do not vote for a particular candidate, and declared they choose electors.The number of electors is determined by the population, ranging from 50 to 3 on the electoral staff.In the United States set the majoritarian electoral system.This means that the candidate who receives in a particular state of a simple majority of votes gets all the electoral votes.Because of this situation may occur when the winning candidate who was given fewer votes actual voters than the opponent.The election results are announced the day after the vote in the states, but officially becomes president elected after the vote in his electoral support.

Note

system of presidential elections in the United States because of its two-tier system has been criticized.But its supporters believe that in this way elections are better protected against fraud.